A working property is the best case solar has, and it is the one almost nobody markets to. You have land, you have daylight loads, and you have buildings with big empty roofs. The economics look nothing like a suburban house.
Irrigation, ventilation, augers, compressors, cooling, shop tools. A house exports its midday power for 10 cents; you use yours instead of buying it, which is worth considerably more.
A ground mount can face true south at the right tilt, clear of shade and easy to sweep. Roof orientation stops being the thing that decides your system size.
Shop, barn, riding arena, machine shed. Big simple roof planes are cheaper per watt to build on than a cut-up house roof.
For most of the operations we work with, the array is only half the reason. The other half is that a February outage stops the water, the heat and the ventilation, and stock does not wait for a line crew. A battery with automatic generator changeover means the essentials carry on without anyone standing in the dark with a pull cord.
BC Hydro closed net metering to new customers on 1 July 2026. Under the Self-Generation rate that replaced it, the power you export is bought at 10 cents per kWh and credited on every bill rather than settled once a year.
Rebates are still on the table — up to $5,000 on solar and up to $5,000 on an eligible battery. But since 1 June 2026 BC Hydro only pays them when the work is done by a Home Performance Contractor Network member. We are one. If your installer is not, the rebate simply does not get paid.
We start from your consumption, not from a package. Twelve months of bills tells us when you actually draw power and how much of an array you would use rather than export — and that ratio, more than anything else, decides whether the numbers work. Then we design around the buildings and the land you already have.
We are a licensed electrical contractor. The array, the service work, the permits and the BC Hydro interconnection are one crew and one accountability, which on a working property matters a good deal more than it does on a bungalow.
That is all we need to tell you whether solar suits your operation, and roughly what it would be worth. No cost, no obligation.
Nechako Solar is a licensed BC electrical contractor, licence LEL0204111, and a member of BC Hydro’s Home Performance Contractor Network. Rebate amounts and rate details are current as of August 2026 and are set by BC Hydro, not by us.
